• News

• All

Jul 22, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Jeff Rosenstock

Jeff Rosenstock surprise released a new album, NO DREAM, back in May via Polyvinyl. Now he has shared a video for the album’s “Scram!” Teenage Stepdad directed the fun video, which features Rosenstock as a cable news personality, an infomercial salesman, and shows him taking a shower. Watch it below.

Rosenstock had this to say in a press release: “I started writing ‘Scram!’ after being inspired by the kids from Parkland High standing up to the behemoth that is the gun lobby. The last four years (and let’s be honest, my entire life) have felt like we are up against an unconquerable force of evil that thrives on violence and inequality. It was a rare bright spot to see thousands of people say ‘hey, we’re gonna be able to vote in the next election, and we are going to vote you the fuck out.’ It was also inspired by the other side—the politicians and lobbyists who promote regressive policies that perpetuate the consolidation of power to the super rich at the expense of everyone else’s lives—having the audacity to demand ‘civility’ from students who have watched their classmates get murdered and are tired of going to school in fear.

“Fuck that. Capitalism is the root of greed is the root of violence. You have bought your control, but more and more people are starting to see through that. I wanted to write a song that felt like a ‘Fuck you, your days are numbered’ to the powers that be.”

Teenage Stepdad had this to say:

“When I first listened to the tune, I strongly identified with the lyrics, the idea being that the very worst people are the ones telling you the loudest what to do and how to think. A lot of what I do as an artist is take all the commercial and advertising imagery and marketing techniques I’ve been forced to consume since I was a kid, and repackage them into something that subverts the bullshit worldview they represent. So part of this video is that, flipping through the channels and seeing old promo formats used to sell soda and cars and vacations turned into something else. The rest of the video is inspired by this moment, by the millions of people no longer asking for change but demanding it.”

The album will available on vinyl via Polyvinyl on August 21.

Read our review of NO DREAM here.

Rosenstock recorded NO DREAM with Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Hard Girls, Joyce Manor) at Oakland’s Atomic Garden, and shared mixing duties with Shirley. It was recorded after Rosenstock resettled from the East Coast to Los Angeles. It is the follow-up to 2018’s wildly acclaimed POST-, an album that brought him a larger audience. For the first time with NO DREAM, Rosenstock had the pressure of delivering an anticipated album.

“I got so used to putting out records that only a few people in the punk underground liked,” Rosenstock said in a previous press release. “And a lot of people in the punk underground also didn’t like them, either.”

Rosenstock also had this to say about NO DREAM: “It was feeling like a very personal record for me. A lot of it was stemming from the anxiety I was feeling from the last two years, this existential crisis of wondering who I am.”

The previous press release further set up the album: “NO DREAM comes at a time of unparalleled chaos and confusion, division and despair, the depths of which would have been impossible to predict when much of it was being written over the course of the last few years. And yet the record feels prescient, unexpectedly and uniquely suited for this moment.”

In June Rosenstock also shared the soundtrack for the first musical episode of the Cartoon Network animated show Craig of the Creek.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.